Manford Gutzke had
finished his day's
teaching in the one-room schoolhouse and was walking across the western
Canadian prairie to the boarding house where he lived.He was a large man; he had been the boxing
champion of the Canadian army.Manford
was an agnostic, not knowing whether or not God even existed, but he
began to
seriously think about God, in part because of a local farmer: a devout
believer
who every year donated two of his cattle to the local small church on
their
annual missions Sunday.As
Manford walked across the prairie he was struck with a thought.He later described the
moment: “I stood in
that field and pondered that thought.If
God exists, he could see me.So,”he said, “I took off my
hat!That may seem
strange, but like most men in
those days I wore a brimmed hat, and I always took it off in the
presence of
women, older people or other important persons.So I took my hat off to God.”(taken from The Attentive Life
by Leighton Ford, pp.79-80)Gutzke's
response reminds me of the psalmist who declared, “From
heaven the Lord
looks down and sees all mankind; from his dwelling place he watches all
who
live on earth – he who forms the hearts of all, who considers
everything they
do.” (Psalm 33:13-15)If
God really exists, shouldn't that make all the difference in the world
to
us?If God is, by
definition, the
biggest of anything that exists, nothing and no one should have a
bigger impact
on our lives than God!He’s
the divine
elephant in the room!

Confidence That
God ISManford
Gutzke moved from being an agnostic — not being sure about God's
existence — to
becoming a fully-committed follower of God and His Son Jesus Christ.I know that because I saw
and heard Dr.
Gutzke teach the Bible when I was an Iowa farm boy.Every summer in June we
traveled twenty miles
to the Cedar Falls Bible Conference.As
we sat in the tabernacle made of open-beamed timber and sweltered in
the
summer's heat, we listened to great preachers from around the world.One of them was Dr. Gutzke.With his bushy eyebrows,
large head, and
gravelly voice, he confidently proclaimed God's message to us.How
can we be confident that God IS: that He really exists?There are many proofs for the existence of
God.For a detailed
study of the subject
I'd suggest reading Lee Strobel's book, The Case for the
Creator.Strobel
is a lawyer and newspaper reporter
who investigated the issues of faith and belief and became a believer
in God by
the sheer force of the evidence.For
now, let me just suggest two arguments for believing that God IS.First,
you can argue that everything that exists had to come from somewhere.Currently, the most
popular belief about the
origins of the universe is the Big Bang Theory: 14 billion years ago
all that
we know exists came into being from an astonishing explosion from an
infinitesimally small point.What
prompted the Big Bang?With
all of the energy and matter that exists in the universe, we have to
ask where
it all came from.Everything
that moves
has had something that moved it.The
universe is constantly expanding; what started it moving?What caused the
Big Bang, if that was the
way it happened?Aristotle,
who lived three hundred years before Christ, taught that there must be
an
unmoved mover: a first cause that set the universe into motion.Science studies cause and
effect; what’s the
cause for the effect we know as the universe?The most logically satisfying solution is the belief
that something
outside our space/time continuum, something beyond energy and matter,
brought
it into existence.This
is also the basic argument that the psalmist used: “The
heavens declare the
glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.Day after day they pour forth speech; night
after night they display knowledge.There is no speech or language where their voice is
not heard.Their
voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the end of the world.” (Psalm 19:1-4)Let
me suggest one more argument for God's existence: the existence of
consciousness.Consciousness
— being
aware of one's surroundings and being self-aware — is an astonishing
miracle.There’s no
reason or need for
consciousness for there to be satisfactory survival and spread of life.The plant kingdom doesn't
have consciousness,
and seems to survive well without it.The animal creation experiences consciousness in
varying degrees, with
humans having it as no other life form on earth does.Consciousness isn't needed for life; it's a
bonus!Where did it
come from?The
logical solution is that it came from
someone who’s supremely conscious: a someone we call God!Genesis states, “Then
God said, 'Let us
make man in our image, in our likeness, . . .’”(Genesis 1:26)It’s
far more intellectually satisfying for me to hypothesize that
everything exists
because of God than to say that it exists because of nothing!In the Bible this
hypothesizing of God is
called by another name: faith.There
isn’t enough evidence to compel belief in God, but there’s enough
evidence to
make belief in God compelling!If
belief in God is a reasonable position to take, how should that belief
affect
our lives?I submit
that it should
affect our lives far beyond anything else!We shouldn’t be able to ignore God in our lives.He's the divine elephant
in the room!

The Divine
Elephant in the RoomWe often use the
phrase “the elephant in the room” to emphasize something that can't be
ignored.It's a
good image!Imagine
if there were a literal elephant in
the room with you as you read this.It
would be hard to ignore!Shouldn't
God
be hard to ignore if we have even a small grasp of who He is and what
He’s
like?The
apostle Paul wrote about the Divine Elephant, though he didn’t use
those
words.He wrote
(concerning those who
suppress the truth of God's reality, denying the Divine Elephant when
they
shouldn't do that), “since what may be known about God is
plain to them,
because God has made it plain to them.For since the creation of the world God's invisible
qualities – his
eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being
understood from
what has been made, so that men are without excuse.For although they knew God, they neither
glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became
futile
and their foolish hearts were darkened.Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools
and exchanged the
glory of the immortal God . . . .” (Romans 1:19-23)Paul went on to
say that they exchanged the glory of God for idols made in the images
of people
and animals.Today
people are more
likely to exchange the glorious God for what little pleasure they can
eke out of
achievement, pleasure, fame, or possessions.As C. S. Lewis said, we’re too easily satisfied!We try to be satisfied
with very little in
this world when we should seek our ultimate satisfaction in nothing
less than
God Himself!Do
I believe that God exists?Do
I believe
that He’s all-powerful?Do
I believe
that He’s all-places-present (which means that He’s right here, with
me)?Do I believe
that He’s all-loving?Do
I believe that He’s all-purposeful (that
His is the ultimate, divine agenda)?If so,
shouldn't that reality affect my life like nothing else?What
could have an impact our lives in a profound way?How about someone giving us a brand-new,
spacious house?How
about someone
handing us 30 million dollars?If
you're
suffering from poor health, how about being given a clean bill of
health?If any of
those things became reality, it
wouldn’t leave us the same.The
reality
of God in our lives should affect our lives like nothing else does!As Paul declared, “For
in him we live and
move and have our being.” (Acts 17:28)Imagine
that you've been shipwrecked on an island and are all alone.Once you realize that you
aren’t going to be
rescued quickly, you try to find food and build a shelter.A few weeks later you
settle into a
reasonable routine in your life alone on the island.Then one morning while you’re walking along
the beach, you spot a campfire that’s still warm — a campfire you
didn’t
build!You know now
that you aren’t
alone!You might be
fearful or hopeful,
or maybe a mix of both.One
thing is
certain: your outlook has changed dramatically!Even
when we’re by ourselves in our homes or cars — or wherever we are — we
aren’t
alone!As Gutzke
said, “If God exists,
then he can see me right now!”

The Choice to Live
DifferentlyThe psalmist
declared, “The fool says in his heart, 'There is no God.'”
(Psalm
14:1)There's
enough evidence to believe
that God exists and that it's foolish to believe otherwise.At least an atheist acts
on his belief that
God doesn't exist by not living his life to please God.I wonder if those of us who believe in God
are often even more foolish for believing that God’s real but acting as
if He
isn't!At least the
atheist is living in
a way that’s consistent with what he believes!We say that we believe in an all-powerful, all-wise,
all-loving God, yet
we often continue to worry, be intimidated by challenges, and let
temptation
lead us into sinning.We
act as if He
doesn't exist!This
week we’ll all have places to go, people to see, and things to do.As we go here, there, and
back again, it can
be amazingly easy to ignore God.We
can
live as if He IS NOT instead of living according to the fact that He IS.If we have faith that God
IS, we shouldn’t be
doing that! The writer of Hebrews stated, “And without faith
it is
impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe
that he
exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.” (Hebrews
11:6)How about
deciding that we won’t
ignore the Divine Elephant in the room any longer?It will have a profoundly positive impact on
our lives as nothing else ever could!Remember
Jesus' words: “And surely I am with you always, to the very
end of the age.”
(Matthew 28:20)Let’s
live as if we
really believe that!